| Homegrown Evil Exists in Our Own
Communities. [United States] Human
trafficking is
a crime involving illegal
import, export, prostitution, pornography, slavery, drugs and a submergence of other
crimes that we as a community have been trying to eradicate. If you think these
issues are hurting our communities now, traffickers will soon multiply the problem.
Thousands of women and children are being bought and sold every day, and it's
happening here. These victims are forced to do the most hellacious things
imaginable. You can see the scars on their bodies and worse, the scars deeply
embedded in their minds. Every day, traffickers sneak poverty-stricken victims into
this country to sell their bodies in brothels, over the Internet and out on the streets.
Smuggling is not trafficking. Trafficking is the illegal importation of
individuals into this country and then forcing them to do things against their will.
I know many of you think better border patrol is the answer, but some of our own
citizens are the criminals. Yes, sex slavery is at the hands of some of our own
American citizens. Don't mistake this as being an immigrant crime. |
| No One Signs Up To Be A
Slave. [United
States] Right now, thousands of men, women, and children in the tri-state area are forced
to work against their will in households, sweatshops, construction sites, and adult clubs.
An estimated 20,000 people are trafficked into the United
States every year (as
many as 700,000 are trafficked internationally) — many through and into
New York, New
Jersey, and Connecticut. |
|
From
Russia with Fear: U.S. Mail-Order Brides Fight Back. [United States] It took
Natasha a day trip to Moscow to find the American husband she had dreamed of. It
took the next six years to get out of the nightmare that followed. A music teacher
from central Russia, she was one of 200 Russian women who patiently lined up at a Moscow
restaurant to meet 10 American men at a gathering hosted by a mail-order bride
agency. She spoke no English but immediately caught the eye of one of the men, 16
years her senior. He was handsome and said he wanted the same things she did: a
loving family and children. They went to museums and the theater with an
interpreter, and he started the paperwork to bring her to the United States as his wife.
The fairy tale ended eight months later. Natasha, who would only be identified
using a pseudonym, had barely set foot in the United States when her new husband began to
abuse her sexually, disappeared for weeks at a stretch, threatened anyone who tried to
befriend her and forced her to sign a post-nuptial agreement. Thrown out of their
house after two years of abuse, Natasha was left to fend for herself in an unfamiliar
country with minimal English skills and no legal documents to work. |
Bulgarian
Women Forced to Prostitute. [Macedonia]
Today’s issue of the British
newspaper Sunday Telegraph published an article on the breaking of a women traffic ring
during a police operation. The operation was conducted in a cheap motel in the
western part of Macedonia where
8 women were found. They were held captives in the
basement of the building with no heating or electricity. The women were aged between
18 and 24. They come from Eastern Europe –
Romania,
Moldova,
Ukraine
and Bulgaria.
They were promised to work as waitresses, babysitters and dancers. Instead of
the promised, they were held “in slavery”, the article commented. The
women were kept in the basement and went up to the motel to perform sexual favors for the
motel’s clients who were often drunk and aggressive, Sunday Telegraph added. |
Kept
in a Dungeon Ready to be Sold as Slaves...the Women Destined for Britain's Sex Trade.
[Macedonia] Hidden
below a shelf in the corridor of a run-down motel, a sharp-eyed
police officer spots what appears to be a trap-door. When he and his colleagues go
down the concrete steps, shining their torches into the dark, damp cellar, they are
scarcely able to believe what they encounter. Cowering against a crumbling wall are
eight terrified young women. Strewn on the bare floor are stained mattresses, a pile
of discarded clothes and a few empty boxes. There is no heating, no light. The
women, aged 18 to 24, are from across eastern Europe, lured from Romania, Moldova, Ukraine
and Bulgaria, with promises of good jobs as waitresses, au pairs and dancers.
Instead, they have been forced into modern-day slavery in
western Macedonia, locked
in the dirty cellar and only summoned upstairs by their masters to perform sexual services
for customers who are usually drunk and often violent. When they were found, the
victims, some of whom had been "broken in" as prostitutes in other countries on
the way to Macedonia, barely
knew where they were. They had no idea what the future
held but knew that it was beyond their control. |